The brutal attack on students of Jawaharlal Nehru University on Sunday was preceded by months of victimisation of dissenting voices on the campus, former and current students who took part in a protest rally in Calcutta on Tuesday said.

Students were being denied their scholarships and the authorities were initiating inquiries against them on flimsy grounds and delaying their registration, a PhD scholar at JNU said.

A former president of the JNU students’ union said the Modi-Shah duo bore a grudge against the university because its students and teachers had camped in Gujarat for days and helped victims of communal riots in 2002.

At least two former students said the campus had lost its “soul” and the JNU of their time had ceased to exist.

Protesters carried posters laced with sarcasm that played on Prime Minister Narendra Modi’s Beti Bachao Beti Padhao programme. One poster read: “BJP tomra JNU girls hostel-e giye beti petao/aar mukhey Bharat mata-r buli aorao (BJP, you thrash JNU girls at their hostel/And valorise Bharat Mata)”.

Over 50 former JNU students took part in the rally in front of the Gandhi statue on Mayo Road, organised by the JNU alumni network in Calcutta and the Citizens Forum for Peace and Democracy.

Amitabha Sarkar, a PhD scholar at JNU, said the university denied students who had expressed dissenting opinions their scholarships and barred them from hostels and from going abroad to take part in academic conferences.

“Proctoral inquiries were started against students who joined protests against the VC or other officials. The students against whom an inquiry is on is denied scholarships,” said Sarkar, who spoke at the protest meeting.

Several research scholars, he said, were not allowed to go abroad to attend academic conferences because an inquiry was pending against them. “These are all ways to target dissenting voices on the campus,” he said.

A few other former students said they felt the “soul” of the campus was missing during their visit there. Two former students said they did not see women walking alone or staying outside their hostels at night, something that was unthinkable when they were students.

A woman who studied history at JNU between 2009 and 2011 said a sense of fear pervaded the campus. “Last year, I was surprised to see that there were no women outside their hostels at night,” said the woman, who is pursuing a PhD at the University of Michigan, US.

A former student of economics echoed her. “When we were students, our female batchmates, juniors and seniors would stay out even till 3 or 4am. But during my last visit to the campus a couple of years back, I did not see any girl walking alone or without a male friend after 10pm. I was shocked to see that,” he said.

Among the speakers at the meeting was Albeena Shakil, who was president of the JNU students’ union in 2001-02. “Our students and teachers went to relief camps in Gujarat and stood by the victims of the riots. We also led marches in Delhi for several months. Modi and Shah are vindictive people and they are taking their revenge at JNU now,” said Albeena, who teaches English at a law school.

“The current students are having a tougher time than us. NDA-I was bad but the current government is worse. There is a VC who is a stooge of the ruling party.”